I tried to do emerge --ask --update --deep --newuse world and when it got to compiling glibc 2.4, i got the error These critical programs are missing or too old: gcc and it got kicked out of the emerge.

emerge --ask --update --deep --newuse portage linux-headers glibc gcc binutils results in the same problem. not sure how to work around this.

Hmm, that's really bad: Even the GCC toolchain, or your Portage/Python installation - or both! - are too old to work currently with your system.

If only one of GCC/toolchain or Portage/Python is hopelessly outdated, there are still chances to bring back things to normal by emerging the other component group first.

Which means in your case: Can you at least re-emerge/update sys-apps/portage?

If that won't be possible, more desperate measures are required...

My guide has been written for the casual case where systems are updated regularly, i. e. at least once each couple of months: At least for reasons of security updates.

If a system is running in a shielded secure or totally offline environment, this assumption can of course be false then. In such scenarios it's perfectly ok to let installations run as long as they are able to do their jobs, without ever updating.

Another case is installations which have been shut down for a very long time, because there is no obligation to regularly update a down system of course.

So, what to do in such cases?

In a nutshell, those "desperate measures" are: Download a current version of a current Gentoo Live-CD and attempt to fix things with it.

That is, boot from the live-cd and update at least "system" using the live-cd's Portage/GCC toolchain.

This can be done pretty much in the same way as you installed the first optional packages of your system when following the official Gentoo installation handbook. (Of course you should skip all steps which format or set up the disk partitions and take care not to accidentally overwrite your manually-tuned configuration files.)

If you are lucky, you can reboot then and your system will again be able to do emerges by itself; then you can follow my guide again to update the rest of "world".

If you are not so lucky, then it might be necessary updating everything when being booted off the live-cd, which is essentially a full stage 2 reinstall.

Badpenguin has written a guide for those worst-case scenarios (you can find the link in my guide), and it can always be used as a last resort.

In response to this thread, I'm trying to run the script. I ran it once, and it didn't fix my video problem, but at least I had a fully update machined.

I then switched from kernel 2.6.18-gentoo-r4 to kernel 2.6.20-gentoo-r8, and got slightly better video response. I tried running this script again around the new kernel (if it makes a difference; I don't understand the system well enough), and packages stopped emerging due to a full root partition. I restarted in case it would clear out some of /var/, which I suspected might have been the problem, but that only freed about 50 MB. I also ran an emerge --sync to see if that would clear some space from /usr/portage. Instead, /usr/ has remained at about 5 GB, thus filling my 10 GB root partition.

Here are the potential problem folders, and I'm not sure how to begin cleaning them:

Depending on whether you are planning to revert to older versions that are no longer in the portage tree, you may try weeding out /usr/portage/distfiles, which I believe makes up the bulk of /usr/portage, as the downloaded source tarballs are stored there.

When my system is relatively stable (no flipping around between package versions), I usually erase the contents of /usr/portage/distfiles completely and perform an emerge -ef world to get back the sources for what packages I have installed._________________0mFg, G3nt00 r0X0r$ T3h B1g!1111

Which, depending on your setup, may well be sensible. I have a rather piquant mixture of stable and ~arch packages, however, and sometimes the packages in ~arch get flung from the tree without being committed to stable, resulting in toothaches when the previous ~arch version worked, but is gone. Call me a paranoid old-fogey, but I sleep much easier knowing that at least I'm able to remerge every package I have installed, even if I manage to wreck my internet._________________0mFg, G3nt00 r0X0r$ T3h B1g!1111

Yep. Better just stick to ditching the actual files in there, not subdirectories or the directory itself. Personally, I don't have CVS installed (at least not consciously! ) but it doesn't hurt to be safe._________________0mFg, G3nt00 r0X0r$ T3h B1g!1111

Yep. Better just stick to ditching the actual files in there, not subdirectories or the directory itself. Personally, I don't have CVS installed (at least not consciously! ) but it doesn't hurt to be safe.

I have been doing emerge --resume --skipfirst to get over esound emerge failure everytime after a emerge --sync and emerge -DuN world.

In a fit of madness, I unmerged esound and realized too late that I can't re-emerge it due to the same failure and now more packages are broken due to missing dependency on esound.

Becuase of esound I can't satisfy Guenther's script preconditions:

* Your system is up-to-date (emerge --ask --update --deep --newuse world)
* Run "revdep-rebuild". If there are problems found and fixed, repeat running "revdep-rebuild" until no more problems are reported.

I am tempted to just run the script anyway... Will Guenther's script fix my gentoo box? Or will it break it even more?

If this fails, I think I should just switch to Ubuntu and admit that Gentoo is too hard core for me.

I am curious, although I can see from the logs how many packages have been compiles so far, is there a way to tell how many are left, also I am assuming that failed packages are in .recompile-remaining-packages.failures, Do they show up in that log immediately?
And what happens if its compiling a game or something that requires a yes and an enter? How long will it wait until it moves on to the next package?_________________Billy DeVincentis

Another question, If you have changed the profile from 206 desktop to 2007 desktop, does the kernel need to be recompiled? I noticed after doing that that several packages needed to be remerged with the acl use flag.

Another thing, my computer has locked up twice in this process, will that effect the compiling (or what has been compiled?)_________________Billy DeVincentis